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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29250156">Sunflowers</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_penny/pseuds/silver_penny'>silver_penny</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who &amp; Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Coda, Episode Tag, Forgiveness, Gen, Global Warming, Hot Chocolate, International Fanworks Day 2021, Serial: s071 Invasion of the Dinosaurs, set just after</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 11:29:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,050</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29250156</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_penny/pseuds/silver_penny</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After it’s all over and the dust has settled, Jo Grant comes to find him. Mike is glad she's here – he really is – but that doesn’t mean he knows what to say to her.</p>
<p>Coda to Invasion of the Dinosaurs.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jo Grant &amp; Mike Yates</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sunflowers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After it’s all over and the dust has settled, Jo Grant comes to find him.</p>
<p>He’s sat at the kitchen table, mechanically folding the edge of a file folder back and forth, when the doorbell rings. He hasn’t had any visitors since he’d snapped and yelled Benton out of his apartment three weeks ago, so he’s expecting a neighbor or the postman when he opens the door. Instead, he finds himself looking down at Jo Grant over a bright bunch of sunflowers.</p>
<p>“Oh, Mike,” she says, “you look terrible.” And while he’s still sputtering in the doorway, she’s pushed past him, into his bare-bones apartment, and he’s no choice but to follow her back into the kitchen. She’s fiddling with the stems, has sourced from somewhere an ugly glass vase that Mike didn’t even know he had, and while he leans back against the countertop she fiddles with the flowers, pulling them this way and that until they’re all perfectly spaced.</p>
<p>“Don’t worry,” she says, after a moment inspecting her handiwork, “they’re all real. No plastic this time.” She shoots him a broad, uneasy grin and it occurs all of a sudden to Mike that he hasn’t spoken since she arrived. He shakes his thoughts away and tries to remember social pleasantries.</p>
<p>Mike clears his throat. “Can I make you a cup of tea?”</p>
<p>Jo beams. “Yes, please,” she says, finally moving away from the counter and making her way to his little kitchen table, before stopping and spinning around to face him again. Mike raises his eyebrows. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any hot chocolate?” she asks. She’s teasing, no doubt recollecting the Doctor’s scolding the first time they met, but Mike can feel himself start to smile in response anyway.</p>
<p>“I think I can manage that,” he responds, changing course for the milk. He busies himself with the stovetop, the milk, the little pot he likes best for drinks, and when all that is done he goes to pull out the cocoa from the pantry, lining it up neatly next to the stove. The milk isn’t really hot yet, but he stirs it around regardless. He can feel Jo’s eyes on his back even from across the room, where she’s sat at his little table. Setting aside the spoon, he turns around to face her, but by the time he’s done so she’s looked away. He follows her gaze.</p>
<p>They look at the sunflowers.</p>
<p>They’re quite nice flowers, he has to admit. Bright and…colourful. Large. The vase is dead ugly, unfortunately, and sort of ruins the effect. Together, they’re louder than anything else in his apartment that he can think of, although even Mike can admit there’s not much to compare them with.</p>
<p>Mike is quickly running out of things to think about flowers, and a quick glance over suggests Jo probably is as well. He’s still not sure why she’s here, but she hasn’t left yet, so that’s…something?</p>
<p>“I, uh,” he starts. “I haven’t seen you since the wedding.”</p>
<p>Jo looks startled. “Oh, goodness,” she says. “Has it really been that long?”</p>
<p>“I think so,” Mike says. “You weren’t at that awful bruncheon thing a few months ago?”</p>
<p>“No, no we were off in the countryside that weekend,” Jo hums.</p>
<p>“Lucky planning, there.”</p>
<p>“Surely it wasn’t as bad as all that?”</p>
<p>Mike raises his eyebrows again and Jo laughs, loud and sweet. He’d forgotten how much he missed her, after she left.</p>
<p>“Well,” she said, leaning forward against the edge of the table, “how’s the Doctor doing? Got someone to hand him his test tubes yet?” And then she makes a face like she’s put her foot in her mouth. Mike cuts her off before she gets the chance to say anything.</p>
<p>“He’s alright, he’s doing well. Got a journalist for an assistant, Sarah Jane Smith? She wrote that article on – “</p>
<p>“Oh!” Jo exclaims, faux pas forgotten. “Sarah Jane Smith, really? She did that lovely piece on industrial pollution in the –“</p>
<p>“- in The Guardian, yes!” Mikes finishes. Frankly, it’s a relief to have an ordinary conversation. To have something to contribute besides worn-out apologies and back-wheeling platitudes.</p>
<p>“I’d love to meet her one day,” Jo says. Mike can’t image the force of nature they’d be together. The Brig would be thrilled. The Doctor would actually be thrilled.</p>
<p>The milk starts bubbling up behind him and Mike turns to stir it round and round his little pot, the wooden spoon knocking rhythmically against the sides. He knocks the cocoa in and keeps stirring. He’s glad Jo is here – he really is – but that doesn’t mean he knows what to say to her. She comes up behind him and pokes around his cabinets until she finds a couple of mugs. Jo knocks the cabinet door closed and comes up on his left, lining the dishware up next to the stove. The mugs are wide and deep, made of a thick clay glazed just off-white. He’d found them at the farmers’ market eight months ago, just before everything started to go wrong. Jo hovers. </p>
<p>Mike switches the spoon to his right hand and sets his elbow on her head. She splutters and ducks, laughing again and batting his arm away. He switches off the stove and fills the mugs straight from the pot with a long-practiced ease. Leaving the pot behind on the stove to cool, he picks up the drinks and presents one to Jo.</p>
<p>“Your chocolate, Ms. Grant,” he says gravely. She quirks an eyebrow up at him but accepts it solemnly.</p>
<p>“Many thanks, Captain Yates,” she says.</p>
<p>“Not a Captain,” Mike reminds her.</p>
<p>“Not a Grant,” she says, spinning back to the table, and well. That’s fair, he supposes. They go back to the kitchen chairs and he spins the blinds open, letting the late-afternoon sunlight leak into his flat. They drink their chocolates in silence, peering out at the narrow street outside, but it’s a comfortable silence this time, and Mike finds he’s calmer now than he’s been in months.</p>
<p>“So what now, Mike?” Jo finally asks. He tilts his head in her direction but otherwise he doesn’t move. When she doesn’t elaborate, he asks.</p>
<p>“What do you mean?”</p>
<p>“Well, what are you going to do now? Any, ah – upcoming plans?”</p>
<p>“No, it’s hardly – well, I mean, it’s not as if I can just go and. Well. It seemed – prudent – to wait until things have…settled down.” Mike clears his throat. “From last month,” he clarifies, uselessly. From that one time you enabled a terrorist attack on central London and sent the military on a wild goose chase for a Tyrannosaurus Rex, Jo does not say.</p>
<p>“Right!” Jo says, her voice all falsely chipper. It grates, a bit, but he supposes he’d hardly given her much to work wish. “It’s just that Cliff and I are planning to sail down to South America, and it turns out we’re a person short. We got to talking, you know how it is, and I thought, well! Who do I know that might be interested? So here I am.”</p>
<p>“South America,” he echoes. His voice is flat, and he can see the tension in his frame reflected back at him in the glass. Jo’s smile does not falter.</p>
<p>“Yup!” she says. “Well. Florida first, for the everglades, of course, and then probably we’ll stop in Panama, but the end goal is Brazil.”</p>
<p>A dull silver car turns into the streets outside, and then stops, pauses, turns laboriously around in the narrow area. It flashes in and out of sight across the slits in his blinds. Jo continues.</p>
<p>“There’s been a spike in deforestation, you see,” she started. “And Cliff’s been talking with people on the ground there, and we offered to come down and help if they needed some more –“ </p>
<p>“Why are you doing this?” he says. She stops, and doesn’t ask him what he means.</p>
<p>Eventually, he turns around to look at her. “When – “ Jo starts, then stops. She places her mug down on the table, careful not to scrape the hard edges of its base against the soft wood. “Mike,” she says quietly, “no one gets to where you were unless they really care.”</p>
<p>“And who even told you where I was, hmm?” He’s still too cold, but he can’t help himself. All that anger, so depressed by grief and shame for the past few weeks, is starting to push up again from inside of him. “Was it Benton? The Brigadier? The Doctor?”</p>
<p>Jo is raising an eyebrow, has traded all her good cheer for a low sarcasm. “Oh, is that so bad, Mike?” she asks. “That all your friends care about you.”</p>
<p>“They shouldn’t,” he says. She laughs.</p>
<p>“Well, we do,” she replies. “I don’t think you get to short-shrift us, after that little stunt you pulled.”</p>
<p>“That stunt was going to destroy civilization as we know it,” he corrects. It feels good to look it in the face. Feels cathartic.</p>
<p>“Well,” Jo says. “We all make mistakes.”</p>
<p>Mike stares, incredulous, but she seems perfectly serious, and he wonders what she got up to when she was away, what things she’s seen, how the landmarks for “mistake” and “momentous” change when you spend so much time in the Doctor’s orbit.</p>
<p>“Look.” Jo says. “Even the Doctor agreed you were on the right track, at some point. And I mean, the road to hell, right?”</p>
<p>“What?” Mike says, utterly lost.</p>
<p>“Good intentions!” she responds. “You’ve got good intentions, Mike, and that’s a better starting place to make amends than most people have got. You’ve just got to find a better way of going about them.”</p>
<p>“And that way is in Brazil?” he asks, but it’s a lighter question, almost a tease, as he grasps onto the olive branch she has extended and holds on for dear life.</p>
<p>Jo leans back in her chair and looks him straight in the eye. “You know they’ve projected a global increase of point six to two degrees from increases in carbon dioxide concentration alone?” It’s phrased like a challenge, like a gauntlet on the table. It’s not.</p>
<p>He stares down at the soft wood grain and feels the back of his throat burn. He thinks about the Doctor’s staunch disapproval of his rank and his gun, and he thinks about the unyielding compassion that burned in his eyes for week after week of the Master’s schemes. Forgiveness, he thinks, is something Jo’s trained in. He hadn’t realized how big it could be.</p>
<p>“When do you leave?” he asks. </p>
<p>“Next week,” Jo says, and grins.</p>
<p>“I’ll be there,” Mike promises. He can feel himself within himself for the first time in months. It’s an awful thing, to be out of your own control, but it’s a blessing to look up and find that somewhere along the way, you’ve been helped back up.</p>
<p>“Jo –“ he starts, but she’s already shaking her head.</p>
<p>“No, Mike, don’t worry about it. I’ll be by later with the details. How’s…oh, Friday? Is that okay?” He nods. “Friday it is, then.” She bustles up and places her mug in the sink. “I’ll just leave this here, and I’ll let you go –“ she looks back up at him and winks “- before you change your mind.”</p>
<p>“Hot date?” Mike asks drily.</p>
<p>“Oh, like you wouldn’t believe,” she says. He walks with her the dozen steps to his apartment door and thanks her for the flowers. She throws her arms around him and kisses his temple and then they spend another two minutes hovering in the doorway. </p>
<p>When she finally disappears around the staircase, he shuts his door again and goes to clean off his mugs and his pot. He considers the sunflowers where they still sit on his countertop, but eventually decides to just leave them. He doesn’t have anywhere better to place them. Mike goes back to the table and pushes their chairs back in, brushing off the dust he can see on the tops of the chairbacks. After a moment, he goes to his little window and pulls the cord all the way down, hitching the mechanism and letting the aglet hit the floor as the blinds fold up on top. He leans his hip against the sill and lets himself stand in the sunlight.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>All concrit welcome!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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